Sunday, May 22, 2011

I've Always Liked Mtt's....

For the first time ever last night I decided to start around 8pm and register for most of the decent looking $7-$55 Mtt's in the Stars lobby.Of course I've played Mtt's before but not since the days when I was only able to play a couple of tables at a time and even then I doubt I've played over 50 in all the years I've played poker.I did cash for over $4k in the only $55 I've ever played back in '08, but I've never really caught the Mtt bug and given them a real go.Perhaps after last night that will change!

At one point in the evening I'd spent over $200 in buy-ins and the Mtt adventure seemed like a waste of time.Bubbling the final table of a $27 after having my QQ busted by the other big stack calling with KJ was a kick in the balls and crashing out of the $55's to sick beats also had me cursing.

I did manage to build a stack on some of my tables though and eventually made it to the final table of a $7 turbo with 969 starters.I knew that the decent money only started at the final table and after that I just played my game and didn't even check the lobby for payout jumps.The FT played just like a sng and I didn't feel out of my depth at all.When we got heads up we were quite evenly stacked.I would have considered offering to chop but the other guy was a complete donk and I fancied my chances.If my A7 had held v his J10s I would have won.My 22 fell to his KJ in the next hand and I shipped $905 for 2nd place.

With two other smaller cashes it actually felt like I'd made more $$ but the buy-ins all add up and I went to bed just delighted to have had such a good night at the felt.

Even when I was crashing out to two outers earlier in the evening I was still really enjoying the change of pace from playing sit and go games.Having stats and reads on players over hundreds of hands meant it felt like there was far more poker to play than the usual ultra tight/shove a lot sit and go mode which works so well.

The other good news is that I felt the games were really soft compared to the usual $15/$22 sngs I play.Sure I was frustrated at some of the beats, but people calling off huge bets with hands like J5s are only going to be spewing money in the long run.Overall, despite the huge variance, the skill gap between the donks and decent players seemed far bigger than in my usual sng games.

I can also see that several sessions of $200 worth of buy-ins with no cashes must be pretty standard too and I'm certainly not kidding myself that Mtt's are easy money after one decent night.

4 Comments:

I'm just playing the odd MTT myself now, after finding grinding SnG's boring, so I know where you are at. You have to roll with the bad beats but it's great when you bink one. I have a little sharky thing on 888 too. :-)